More Rosebud biography special with Roger Lewis

0:00Marvelous, original, remarkable, energizing, M-O-R-E, Moore, Rosebud. We're ready for you. Yes, that's me, Giles Bradworth, and my friend and producer, Harriet Jane Moore.

0:35Welcome to another episode of More Rosebud. This is Rosebud, the episodes that go out on Tuesdays, and they're a little bit different. there's more more there's more of me because i say a little bit more on them and there's much more of my friend and producer halliott jane because you don't get any of her on friday but tuesday is her big day you may not be listening to this on a tuesday but we meet to get it ready for a tuesday and we usually meet at um grosvenor house but this time we're meeting at my home for a reason This is going to be rather a literary episode of Rosebud. Who's your favourite writer, Harriet?

1:16Oh, that's a difficult question. George Orwell. Oh, I love George Orwell. That's a good choice. Beautiful English. David Lodge, as discussed. We've often touched on David Lodge. If you don't know his work, 1960s, 1970s university novels, but Harriet recently lent me his novelised version of the life of HG Wells. Yes. I'm a big fan of Emile Zola, who I've mentioned before. He's a French 19th century writer. He's brilliant. I love funny books. So I read all of A Dance to the Musical. Oh, I love that. Anthony Pohl. Such a brilliant series of books. Yeah. And I love Catcher in the Rye and things like that.

2:08I love a dazzling writer. And today our special guest is a dazzling writer, as you'll discover in a moment. He's a biographer and quite brilliant. He has a way with words. And I love writers who have a way with words. We recently lost a brilliant writer with an extraordinary way with words, who was probably, until he died, our greatest living playwright, playwright, which is saying something, since Alan Bennett is still alive. I'm talking about Tom Stoppard, who had an extraordinary way with words. I was lucky enough to meet him on a number of occasions. And of course, we have had on Rosebud Felicity Kendall, who was in a relationship with him famously for a time.

2:53Anyway, he has died. And to give you an illustration of actually how brilliant he was with words michelle and i my wife and i were once with him and uh for some reason um einstein the subject of einstein came up oh no my wife's birthday came up my wife's birthday is the 14th of march and tom starbard said oh that's well that's actually albert einstein's birthday oh or maybe i said no it's more likely me uh it was michelle's birthday came on the 14th march somebody mentioned albert einstein and i said it's also michael kane's birthday not many people know that so i thought i was being amusing and tom starbard was sitting there we were at a table to dinner table and on a napkin i can't remember if it was a linen napkin or a paper napkin he wrote a poem there and then gosh which he gave to michelle called the 14th of march gosh And this is what the poem done spontaneously on the spot.

3:5314th of March. Einstein born, quite unprepared for E to equal MC squared. And he was passed it to her. No. That's the kind of brilliant, amusing, remarkable person. Completely fascinating. Was he sexy? He always looked very attractive in pictures. Isn't that interesting? I think one would have, I would call him, but I don't fancy men looking at him he was certainly considered incredibly attractive because he was amusing because he was tall, because he was brilliant I think to look at he was what the French would call joli led which means attractively ugly but I think a lot of models are that nowadays, particularly that kind of harsh beauty but he had enormous style you want to look at them everybody admired him from the present king and queen right the way through to anybody who ever had any association with him just thought my goodness he is the bee's knees anyway he's gone but his work remains yeah so r.i.p tom stopper r.i.p and now we're going to meet someone who has memorialized some of the greats but done so with brilliant language he's called roger lewis yeah roger lewis is a dazzlingly brilliant writer.

5:16His biography of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, whose centenary falls in this year, 2025, Erotic Vagrancy, a huge book described by Stephen Fry as perhaps the greatest biography he had ever read. It is groundbreaking. It's also backbreaking. It's so heavy. there is so much to read it's fascinating what roger does as a writer is he doesn't obey the rules the general rules he obeys his rules he's got a fluency with him that is extraordinary he's also written a wonderful biography almost as long i think of peter sellas another extraordinary actor whose centenary falls this year he wrote one of my favorite books by him is a book about Charles Hortree, the carry-on film star, which is called, I think, Private Whittle.

6:09Funny title, funny book, but a very short book. But he's remarkable. And I've known him for a number of years. He's a very good friend of mine. And I thought, let's meet this Tuesday. Let's have more Rosebud with a remarkable, literary, journalistic, interesting character. Welsh background, fiery mind, fascinated by interesting people. So that's what we're going to have today. So I hope people very much enjoy this episode of More Rosebud with biographer, writer, Welshman, Roger Lewis. Cue the music.

6:56Before I ask my very special guest, Roger Lewis, the first question, which he knows what that is, I ought to declare an interest. I've known Roger a number of years. I love his books. I think he's a remarkable individual. That's why I wanted to have him here with us on Rosebud. We first met. Now, do you know, Roger, when we first met? Yes, I do. I recall the moment. It was at a literary lunch thing in Watford. And we were the speakers with Penny Junor, I think was the other speaker, the three of us and uh i was talking about laurence olivier you were talking about one of your novels a thriller i think you'd written and uh we hit it off instantly i think it's fair to say we did i've been in touch ever since but what is interesting to me is that it was in windsor not watford um it wasn't penny juna it was lady annabel goldsmith and we both have vivid recollections of this experience yes and in different places in different places and with different people that's really what i think is interesting about talking to you because you are a a wonderful biographer you're a recognized biographer in fact on the cover of one of your recent books erotic vagrancy everything about richard burt and elizabeth taylor We're going to talk about them later.

8:22Stephen Fry tells us, one of the best biographies I have ever read. Magnificent, terrible, tragic, triumphant. So you are a prince of biography. We met when you had written about Laurence Olivier. And the question I want to begin by asking you before we get to our real first question is, we know each other. We like each other. We remember vividly our first encounter. But genuinely, I think it was in Windsor. You think it was in Watford. Yes, me too. How reliable is the memory? Well, I think memory is very unreliable indeed. But I do remember that occasion. And I've never thrown anything away. And I have trunks and boxes and cases of all the memorabilia and the bits and pieces.

9:04And I'd probably be able to fish out my schedule for that very week. And the train tickets. And the evidence. But I'm not going to do all that sort of archaeology. dealing around. Really the question is when you're writing a biography of say Sir Laurence Olivier, a long fascinating extraordinary life with three interesting marriages, how do you know that what you're telling us is true, is correct? Well I, when I was doing the Sellers book, I interviewed, Peter Sellers, I interviewed hundreds of people and you'd get the same story from all these, from different people who'd been there at the time, his witnesses, his eyewitnesses, but the story would be told slightly differently.

9:48So everything is from a different angle and you get different interpretations of the same events. And I rather loved that. That sort of fascinated me. Indeed, the whole genre of biography is not really something I believe in anymore because I don't think there's any such thing as objectivity. everyone remembers things differently they add in a bit more color over time they they interpret events differently and and facts don't speak for themselves they always require interpretation and analysis and so uh that's why the the seller's book in particular is is so big it's so long because i see things from lots of different angles this sort of cubist style of writing You see the same events from all these different perspectives.

10:41And indeed the whole Peter Sellers saga now, 30 years after the book first came out, I think of Sellers very differently than I did originally. When it first came out, I was in my 30s, I was horrified by his bad behaviour, his madness. Now I think... You mean literal madness? Oh, I think so, yes. how did that manifest itself all the caprices all the horribleness to his wives and his children and colleagues not turning up on the set because God had appeared to him in a dream to say it was not safe to enter the studio the next morning, I mean all these things and he was allowed to get away with it because he was making the studios and the production companies so much money so they indulged him so when I did the book originally I thought how reprehensible all this kind of behavior whereas now last year when I was writing or thinking about him again in the run-up to his centenary I was thinking well how hard it must have been for Peter Sellers to remain being Peter Sellers the the agony of of the artistic genius and also how wonderful just to be able to skim over, skim across his life like that, without giving a damn.

12:08And most of us don't live in that way. We all try our very best to be respectable. And the sorts of people I'm drawn to, they weren't. They were what a school would have been called a bad influence. but I've never known a bad influence who had a bad influence because most people have their pension plans and they open manila envelopes and they work in an office and they obey the nation's laws but occasionally you get these wonderful maverick temperaments that can't be bothered with any of that. Of those maverick temperaments, and I've read your Laurence Olivier book, the Peter Sellers book, Erotic Vagrancy, the one about Richard Byrd and Elizabeth Taylor, almost my favourite, they go to about a thousand pages apiece, they are very big books, almost my favourite though is the smallest book you've ever written, Charles Hortree, 1914 to 1988, The Man Who Was Private Whittle by Roger Lewis.

13:13It's a delightful little book and only 100 pages long compared with 1 ,000 pages long. Of all these characters that you've written about, who is the one you'd most like to have walk into the room right now? Well, I think maybe all of them in the crowd could come in. I wonder if they'd enjoy my books or whether they'd be appalled at what I've done with them. Yes, Charlie Hortree I'd love to have met. But apparently in real life he was a rather bitter, difficult person, thrown out of all the pubs in Deal where he lived for being sort of drunk and disorderly. He moved to Deal because it was where the Royal Marines had their school for their music school.

14:03So it was sort of artistic soldiers. He was wanting to be closer to these young men. Indeed. who you know were good with the trumpet he was he did like the idea that these pubs would have all these sort of young men there as you say blowing their trumpets and so that's why he ended up there he was gradually banished from everywhere and he was sort of bitter and unpopular but I think because he was one of those gifted people that was typecast in the carry-ons and he could have done so much more he could have done Shakespearean clowns or Sheridan plays um never got offered those sorts of roles Kenneth Williams the same in a larger scale so there's a sort of bitterness they just ended up earning a smallish fee at Pinewood doing yet another carry-on film Kenneth Williams always admired Charles Hawtory admired his artistry what i mean it's a funny subject to choose for a book here you are a major a major biographer and you choose charles haltry not even one of the top billed people in the carry-ons to write a book about well is that was that perversity on your part what drew you maybe it was because you see i'd done laurence olivier and you can't get bigger than that you know as far as actors go so i also wanted to do someone who was not on that big high shelf but i love the story of Olivier coming to Pinewood in a limousine to shoot Khartoum, I think, and Charlie Hortree sort of walking from the bus stop, and Olivier giving him a lift, and sort of Hortree in the back of the car with Laurence Olivier, and that's the sort of thing Tom Stoppard would make a play out of, isn't it?

15:54Those sort of two characters there together, both in the same business, but at opposite ends yes yes absolutely one sitting in the rolls royce with the astro and rug over his knees and the other oh dear walking from the tube at a axe bridge yes do these people have something in common these are hugely celebrated people um certainly kenneth williams would have said charles haughtry had a certain genius were they people what what why do they stand out from the crowd why are people still buying books about people who are All of these people are dead, but your Peter Sellers book has just been reissued.

16:31Erotic Vagrancy. Yes, and he's still dead. And he's still dead. Well, except you like to feel you've brought him to life a bit. And it was made into a film with Geoffrey Rush. A wonderful film, I think. Yeah. I wonder, well, they're my sort of gallery of Peter Pan's, aren't they? They're the sort of people that never quite grew up. Sellers certainly didn't. Elizabeth Taylor was a child star. and Richard Burton had that traumatic childhood that he never quite managed to shake off. So this transition from childhood to adulthood and when all these grown-up responsibilities are meant to commence, I think that troubled all of them.

17:10And it troubled me too. I never quite knew when adulthood had begun. With you? Yeah. Well, let's begin with your story. We can come back to some of these heroes, anti-heroes, remarkable figures later on when we get to your professional life. But let's begin at the beginning with you, Roger Lewis. What year were you born? What is your birthday? 26th of February, 1960. Fine. If our listeners would like to make a note of that. Yes. Well, congratulations on getting to your... Yes, in cards. Your 65th? No. Yes, your 65th. Indeed. I can't believe it. What age are you in your head? I think about three.

17:53But you were always precocious. Yes, I was. But then you can't carry on being precocious, can you? You can't carry on being promising. Let's go back to your first memory. Roger Lewis, what is in your head as your first memory? Well, when I wrote my first book, it was... My mother kept everything. and she found this thing and she showed it to me and it was this little sort of cut-out thing and I'd written about my hamster stealing some cheese which I spelt C-H-I-S, some chis and it was all block capitals and I'd stapled it together and to this very day what I love about writing are the pens, the paper, the inks the sellotape, the glue, the scissors I love all the stationary side.

18:48The paraphernalia. The paraphernalia. But do you write by hand? Yes, I do. Gosh. All my books are written in longhand. I do a thousand words a day, and then the next day, polish it and type it up, and then move on. And then I never look back. I've never reread any of my books. I get it as I want it. Well, I haven't got time. It's taken me long enough to read them once. Well, exactly. Imagine writing them as well. I mean, there's just not enough time in the world. So tell me about who were these parents? Who was your father? Who was your mother? Well, my mother, she's still alive in her 90s.

19:25Absolutely full of beans and vitality, and she's coming to see us in a few weeks, a sort of state visit, coming on the train on her own, you know. Well done, Helen. She sort of shouts at everyone at Paddington to do her bidding. What was her maiden name? What was she called? Barbara is her name, Her maiden name was George, Barbara George, from a farming family. And her family were from South Wales, as everyone in my life is. Pembrokeshire. And my father was the son of the local farmer and butcher. And what was his name? Wyndham. Wyndham Lewis, actually. So I used to think I was the son of a vortist.

20:12you know like um tell me what is a vortecist like that that crowd around ezra pound you know oh is that what they were called they were called vortecists it was a kind of school like bar house they were vortecists yes and they they wrote and painted and they did all this modern art you see um and but winden blouse i think was a writer but he was a writer as well and a painter. Fine. So I thought that was my father, but no, he was the butcher. He was the butcher in Church Street in Bedliss. I do remember, confusion, you'd wrote a biography, I remember, of Anthony Burgess, the great writer. A disaster.

20:52Yes, it was a disaster because people really wanted a book about Guy Burgess. They did, The Spy. They took it back to the shops. They wanted either Guy Burgess or Anthony Blunt. But this was a book about the man who wrote the... Clockwork Orange. The Clockwork Orange, yes. Which people only vaguely remembered because of the Kubrick film. No, honestly, it was a total disaster. I think to this day it sells two copies a year and one of them's returned to the shop. So going back to your parents, you're the son of Wyndham Lewis who was a butcher, basically. Yes, not a modernist artist. And how did he meet your mother?

21:29Oh, at school. They went to the school, Bayslake, grammar school, which is the school I went to as well, which was comprehensive by then. So I had the same teachers as my parents had. And what were they like when you were a little boy? Were there brothers and sisters in the family? Yes, I was the eldest. And I remember when my brother Rob was born, it was quite nice having a brother for two or three weeks, but then he was sort of still there. And he's still there now to this day. And another brother, Ricky, who went into the police force, and my sister, Angharad. So he was the largest family, four of us.

22:04And where did you live? Can you remember your first home? Yes, in Bedles, in a biggish house, big Edwardian house, because in those, well, going back, the family were doing quite well. You know, High Sheriff of Monmouthshire and all this kind of stuff. Your father was High Sheriff of Monmouthshire? No, but my great-grandfather. Oh, so there was some heritage there? And there was a bit of money? There was. A little string of shops. A string of shops called Lewis the Butcher? W.G. Lewis and Son. and I was the son but I never went into it but there was a farm near Lisvain outside Cardiff and a slaughterhouse where the stock was raised and then into the slaughterhouse and then out to the shops and so they did very well it's a very successful business until supermarkets came along and then that was that and their life together was what how did over the years how did it develop but my parents well my father was always asleep because he used to get up really early to work in the shop i mean really like four in the morning so he was always on the sofa asleep um and but we used to go to the welsh national opera in cardiff and to the theater the new theater i remember when i was about 11 we went to see peter brooke's midsummer night's dream which famous tall brown you know and it was a house full of books because my parents had a count at Hatch Arms and my father had his suits made at Jeeves and Hawks you know so it was so he's a gentleman a gentleman and it's an intellectual household yes yes but my father was never it was not allowed to go to university which is what he wanted because he had one of those fathers that said no you know I've done all this for you so he said stay so it was sort of very much they very much wanted me to go and have that freedom of going off to university just tell me about their relationship were that well obviously they were intimate at least four times but can you picture them together as a couple how were they together as a couple um they were very close and friendly and i mean you know we never needed feminism in wales because the women were in charge anyway already so my mum ran the home and the house and you know i don't think my father ever boiled water he never cooked you know he never did anything domestic um and he he was only interested in all of us when we were old enough to chat and talk and have conversations um but that's how it was in those days you know did you speak welsh as a family?

24:48Absolutely not. My great-grandparents spoke it to each other, but deliberately didn't impart it to their children because they had this notion that English was a superior culture and language of the future. Welsh was the language of the chapel. It was sort of narrow. Peasantry would speak it, you know. It's not not now. It's all come back. It's been reinvented.

25:23Go back to you as a child. What sort of a child were you? This is before you were ten, as a little boy, running around. Did you run around? Were you active? I just liked sort of sitting there with a book and watching the television and being a bit quiet. I was studious in a way. What were the early books you read? Can you remember? Yes. They were, the first books I read were the Mrs Pepperpot books and then all the Enid Blyton, which I adored. and a few years ago I reread some of those famous five books and I thought they were really good and I don't understand why there was this sort of snobbish reaction against them but they were also, I was also very claustrophobic reading them because they're always being trapped in caves and tunnels and wardrobes and boxes and I sort of found all that quite hard to get through now because I've suffered from claustrophobia quite badly.

26:19So, yes, I read everything. The National Geographic, we used to subscribe to, the Observer newspaper, there were sheets of that all over the place always. I don't think they were quite serious people, your parents. Were they political? No, not at all. Sort of conservative in the old-fashioned way of, you know, just not really welcoming or wanting change. Did you go to church or chapel? well we were sent to Sunday school and I realize now that that used to happen all over Wales and that's the only time one's parents could actually probably go to bed with each other and I think most people in Wales are conceived on a Sunday afternoon when they've sent the offspring off to to the church or the chapel for 45 minutes of intimacy so here you are this little boy at school favorite teachers oh yes i had marvelous teachers always and uh well you know chris beetles the gallery chap yeah he owns a gallery for those who don't know chris beetles owns a big gallery in London and sort of specialises in cartoons.

27:33In cartoons, people are roncers. And anyway, he asked my mother once, he said, oh, what was Roger like as a child? And she said, well, he was absolutely terrible then and he's absolutely terrible now. So I could sort of see this guy with a grandchild. Why would she have said that, even joking about her child? Well, yes, I think it was difficult, you know, hard to, just sort of very full of curiosity and liveliness and energy. And how did that make it difficult for her? Give me an example of you being difficult at home. Well, my mother was very interested in horses and ponies and stuff like that.

28:14And I never really liked all that outside stuff. I was never really one for outside. it. I mean, I'm extremely hard to believe that people find it hard to believe I'm a farmer's son, really. Did you like your parents? Well, during one's teens, you sort of go off them, don't you? But now, yes, I do. I think of my father all the time. I mean, he's been dead 20 years. And why do you think about him all the time? What do you think about him? Because he was

28:47very pleased with what I was up to. You know, I remember when I was at Magdalen. Magdalen College? Yeah, in Oxford. I remember my parents, they came for their first visit. And I remember my dad saying, oh, Roger, if I were you, I'd dig a hole here and sit in this and never get out. He just really loved the whole thing. He was sort of very pleased with what I achieved, shall we say. And your mother? I think so. I mean, in that Welsh way, you see, you never praise someone openly. And then I, because you'd never want to risk someone getting above their station. And then I'd hear sort of third or fourth hand that she'd been down to the bookshops in Cardiff and commanded the girls there to put my stuff in the window, you know, or on the table at the front.

29:42you know so do things like that because in one of your books almost my favorite book called seasonal suicide notes oh i'm very rude about her you're very rude about her what did she make of that i mean you turn her into a bit of a running gag almost she's a caricature character explain if you haven't read the book how this happens well the thing about seasonal suicide notes is that it's sort of collection really and i sort of augmented it of those very boastful round robin letters we all get Christmas time where people you know people enclose this sheet of A4 don't in their Christmas cards and it's all very boastful about their children's wonderful examination successes and pony club triumphs and the summer in the villa in Tuscany and all this kind of thing and I thought well my life isn't like that and I don't you know my children they they weren't even fairly competent on the recorder.

30:40So I thought I'd write about that kind of thing. So, yes, my mother wanders through it. I'm very rude about her. But I'm mostly rude about myself in that. Was your mother upset by it all? No, she just brushes it aside. She knows how ridiculous it all is. Because you may remember that I chose it as a book for a good read. Yes. And the other people read it and clearly didn't get it. No, I know. Well, people didn't realise that it was satirical. Or that it was comic. I mean, also, you know, sometimes people with my seller's book, or Erotic Vagrancy, they really hate it. All these one-star reviews.

31:22Oh, you've got... Why do they... What do they hate? They don't get the comedy of it. People don't. They just think a biography should be this orthodox thing, every book the same, you know, starting with the ancestry and ending with the memorial service, this chronological plot, which I was determined not to do anything like that. So people don't like things that are a bit different. This is not what we're used to, so this can't be right. From your childhood, where does this perversity come? Well, looking back, I suppose I was sort of very spoiled. But you don't realise that as a child. I mean, I was interested in puppets, and so the attics were converted into a puppet theatre up there with lights and everything and curtains.

32:11As I said before, trips to galleries and theatres and things. Everything I wanted, I would have. They indulged you? Yes, they did. I was interested in making films. I had a cine camera, you know, and projector and the whole thing. Because were you a golden child? And did they look at you slightly amazed? No, I think they were a bit disappointed. I wasn't interested in, as I said, in outside, in tractors and climbing trees and going on, you know, point-to-points on horses and stuff like that. I wasn't interested in that. My brother was. Your school was co-educational? Yes, it was. It was a state grammar school?

32:51Well, comprehensive, actually. And did you get on well there? Did you thrive? I loved the sixth form. Actually, it was the happiest two years of my life. Because in the sixth form of the university up ahead, it was all full of hope. And their life was, it was going to unfold. And the implicit moral bargain was if you passed your exams, you got to university, their grown-up life would be. Instead of, you know, struggle and dissension and defeat and disappointment. Did you always know you'd leave Wales? Oh, yes. I was always encouraged to. even by my teachers actually this was nothing sort of anti-Welsh anti-Wales about them but it was the same this is what interested me about Richard Burton this notion that if you were going to get on you had to leave Wales maybe it's not like that now but that's certainly what it was like in the 1970s what about girls?

33:52when did you discover girls? I was madly in love with a girl in Mac and Juniors called Deborah Summerhays. Oh, it's a lovely name. Yes, and she's probably, if she's alive, she's probably some frightful old ratbag now. Feel free, Deborah, to send in a picture. No, don't. Because I'm sure you're not. It would be terrible listening to this. And there was another one called Hazel Pugh. And I used to do badminton in the sixth form in order to try and catch sight of Hazel Pugh's knickers. we'd probably be cancelled today wouldn't we for that kind of that kind of lasciviousness was any intimacy achieved was any was there any reciprocal no no you'd sort of love them from far what was your first successful bit of wooing well she's off stage as we speak oh really see anna and i've been together since 1979 79.

34:55So how old were you then? 18, 19, I suppose. Oh my goodness, so she was your first proper girlfriend? Yes, I thought I'd get that out of the way. No, but that's good, but that's good. What do you think she saw in you? What did you have to offer? Well, people ask her this sometimes, they sort of ask her in this sort of sceptical way of, what on earth did she say? She always she always says that I made her laugh. Where actually did you meet her? Can you remember the moment? Oh, in St Andrews, yes. In St Andrews, that is where I went. St Andrews University in Scotland? Yes, yes. So I went from...

35:34Oh, I thought you were going to tell me you went to Oxford, to modern college. Well, I did. Afterwards. So you go to St Andrews first. St Andrews first. So you get your A-levels. Yes. And you do very well at them, I mentioned. A-level, yes. But they're things like English and history and... And geography. Oh. And in those days they paid your travel expenses. So I thought, well, and everyone else is just going to go to Cardiff or Bristol or Swansea or Aberystwyth or Bangor. And I thought, well, if they're going to pay my travel expenses, I'll go as far away as I can, you know. So I was off to Scotland.

36:10And then I met Anna that term. And you met her rather like the Prince of Wales meeting Catherine. Yes, well, I inspired that relationship. I'm wanting you to describe the moment you first saw her and what it was in her that made you think, yes, yes, I'm going to pursue this. Yes, I do remember exactly. We were in a cafe there. I was with some other friends and she came in. And I don't know, the smile, the dimples, the sweetness of nature, you know, the loveliness, which is still there. A bit careworn now. well being with you all these years are we surprised that she's so how quickly did you become an item instantly oh really well you know within a few weeks and then i remember she came down to wales and visited my lot and what do they make of her oh um my father said oh Rod she's a lovely little plumpy and my mother said oh you'll probably do something stupid now and lose her so that was a big endorsement of course and also it was a challenge to you not to lose her yeah so we got married when we graduated and then came back and then to Maudlin where I was doing graduate work you've done successfully at St Andrews and your plan was to become an academic yes it was to teach English i know about nothing else i had two wonderful teachers and i think this is where i came alive intellectually really if i can that sounds a bit portentous but it was really wonderful because the teachers the lecturers up inst andrews they were rather sort of like school masters really and then suddenly uh here i was i had two wonderful wonderful uh people there who believed in me called Richard Ellman.

38:09Oh, famous. The biographer. Famous biographer of Oscar Wilde. And John Bailey. John Bailey and Iris Murdoch. Very good. Played by the great Jim Broadbent in the film Iris, for which he won an Oscar. Yes. And Judi Dench played Iris. And he was your teacher. John Bailey was, yes. What did John Bailey give you? People often speak about a great teacher. What does it mean, a great teacher? Well, you'd sort of say something probably very banal and unoriginal, but he'd sort of make it seem as if you'd said something marvellous and so he'd give you confidence. And I was never any good, to this day I'm not, with people sort of bossing me around and telling me things.

38:49Like if I have an editor that seems to try and think they know better than me about what I'm up to, I instantly recoil and don't get anywhere with them. You have a reputation for this. Over the years this has cost you, I know, because I remember when you were writing, I think it was the television, you were the television critic for either The Mail or The Mail on Sunday. Oh, I think yes, Mail on Sunday. And they didn't like the fact you had this running gag of very amusing jokes at the expense of Bruce Forsyth. Oh yes, he wrote and complained. And he wrote to me, because I thought his wig was so absurd.

39:26And he wrote to me and he said, oh, you've cost me so much money in stamps because I have to write back to all my fans who are writing to me so sweetly about your terrible articles. It was vituperation. So I sent Bruce a book of first-class stamps. And then he died, I think. But he had a sort of genius, Bruce Forsyth, as an entertainer, in my view. I suppose he did, yes. But the point was... I always find him sort of slightly bullying, really. There's a scene... I mean, he fascinates me. as these light entertainment figures do. And it's actually quite aggressive. There's... The audience is there to be dominated.

40:09And there's a scene I saw on YouTube, probably, where he's doing this act with Norman Wisdom, and it's really quite violent and unpleasant, the two of them. But he knew how to hold an audience, didn't he? I mean, he made me laugh. No, he never made me laugh. He made me fearful. he was like one of those um you know bullying p.e teachers now i'm explaining to the listeners why week after week of this in the mail on sunday led the editor to phone you up and say roger can you please pull back a little bit on bruce forsyth people do love him they love generation game they're loving strictly to have you relentlessly telling this this man is a brute and a sadist humiliated norman wisdom is wearing a wig when it's simply a little bit of an adjustment to his there please hold back and you said fuck off well didn't you i'm in an essence i probably did in essence also another target was um bob monkhouse oh and uh the editor said oh we were you're upsetting bob's widow with all you're saying and it turned out bob's widow had died 18 months previously so either she was complaining through a ouija board or this was just a ploy to try and get me to anyway i and i also reviewed telly for the oldie but there's nothing i wanted to watch really in the end it's all police procedurals and game shows and diy gardening and cooking you know what i'm really trying to get at is the source of this i call it perversity you're saying you were indulged as a child you were spoiled but you've gone on doing this sometimes to your detriment i mean you've had great arguments i know with some of your book editors who wanted you know yes why do you go on doing it well i sort of know what i'm doing really and i i love having sort of high flown passages followed by the demotic you know swearing and commonplace speech because i try to make make make my my passages my slabs of prose read like what's going on inside my head you know as if as if it's i'm on a stage delivering this monologue or going through my pockets and finding all these silk handkerchiefs or or falling through trapdoors and coming across surprising things so i sort of know what i'm doing and it's the only area of life where I'm confident is when I'm writing.

42:48Other areas, you know, I'm a complete nervous wreck. We'll come on to that in a moment. Let's get you back to Oxford. You've gone to Magdalen College, Oscar Wilde's old college. Yes. And you're there as a graduate student. What are you studying? Well, this is, of course, a terrible trajectory I was on. I took Anthony Burgess seriously. and so I wanted to do something about you know how he was the heir to James Joyce and so on and then that later on became the book for Faber and Faber just commercial and critical disaster though there are people that can see merit in it who've been kind to me about it say it's my best work so you wrote this as a kind of phd it was a thesis yes I did and then threw that out and wrote it as a proper book.

43:37And then I met Mark Booth, this editor from Random House, which was a little century, that you worked with as well, and commissioned a Peter Sellers book for me. And this changed your life? It did. Because I thought you'd gone on in academia for a while longer. Didn't you teach at another university? Well, I'm a visiting professor in a few places, and I never visit. Oh, you are still a visiting professor, are you? I am. yes the university of ulster i've never been and i've no intention of going we'll send this to them to remind them that you exist i don't want you to lose the professorship um yes i like well anyway there was this sort of academic uh life i briefly had but i i wasn't suited to it i the kind of writing i wanted to do was was not not sober enough for academe and you are able to earn a living people listening we get a lot of young listeners to rosebud and you were a teacher they will be delighted to hear that you can earn a living as a biographer well it's a pittance um i got vastly more uh for the life and death of peter sellers as an advance when I was a complete unknown in the late 80s.

45:00Then I got for Erotic Vagrancy years and years later, decades later, when, you know, I paid my dues, shall we say. I'd written all these other books. Because advances have shrunk. So it's why I've ended up in the slum district in Hastings. You live in Hastings. You've always lived in unusual places. We don't just live in Hastings. You've also got homes elsewhere. I do. you've got tell us where you have your homes well we bought a house in normandy where we'd lived in the 90s when i was writing the seller's book back in the same neighborhood so and that's really my favorite place normandy yeah it's absolutely beautiful um spoiled countryside um david hair said it looks like the kind of house where may gray would come to investigate a poisoning

45:54do you see yourself as a character in a story i mean do you look at yourself objectively yes i i think i i imagine myself as sort of um sort of one of those forgotten dim 1890s poets in some dusty spa town um sort of max beerbohm figure or someone like well what character created by max beerbohm shall we say but this quite pleases you yes it does all these disguises and masquerades and so on yes because my books are about that um the peter sellers book in particular fascinated me about um you know all these characters he'd play so thoroughly not just with the makeup on the false noses and the wigs and the funny walks and the costumes but the way he'd psychologically alter and temperamentally alter and uh i always sort of always a conundrum when we wake up each day how do we reacquire the the personality that we were yesterday you know how do we just become ourselves again and what do we mean by that what do we mean by the self what do we mean by the self who is roger lewis well i just this sort of agreed fiction really i think most people are and always playing roles.

47:20People in the office are different than how they are at home, how they are with their children, how they are with their grandchildren. There's all these alterations. And as we get older, we change again and look back at our younger selves with amazement. We were once like that.

47:42Tell me about your near-death experience only a few years ago. Oh, I didn't know there were two. I've had two of these. I've had two of these. My mother said, I better not have a third, because, you know, that would be that. But it was 2011 when Oscar, our son, was in Falmouth University. I mean, I used to, you know, we pamper our children ridiculously. I used to go down and do the cooking for his house, all his housemates. We were down there one Christmas, and I had this agonising tummy ache. Really, really painful. for and uh anyway it turned out to be pancreatitis so that was three weeks in the uh hospital down in cornwall on a drip and goodness knows what and they were all i was in this high dependency ward and when uh celebrities shall we say are in hospital like that it's all in the papers isn't it all the teddies they get sent and the flowers and the fruit bowls of fruit they get sent i had one card from Richard Ingrams.

48:44Oh, that's something. Yes. Oh, no, I had another one from Brian Forbes. Well, these could be Richard Ingrams. No, but he got, Brian Forbes, he got the wrong end of the tickling stick and he thought it was Roger Moore.

49:03So I had, you know, he said, Brian Nanette, very concerned. And, because, yes, it was mentioned in the Daily Mail. And, in fact, the Daily Mail features department sent me a bouquet of flowers, which is rather nice of them. You'd rather have a check, probably. Yes, I'd rather they bump my fee up anyway. But everyone thought I was going to die, and I nearly did, in a way, because it's actually quite a nasty thing, pancreatitis. And it turned out I had terrible diabetes. What was the second near-death experience? Well, that was more recently. And then I was... Quite dramatic, too. Oh, Sunday morning.

49:40off I went to Morrison's and I felt a bit giddy and the next thing I knew all these bearded blokes in high-vis jackets were peering over me asking me my name and my date of birth and all this and I'd had a myocardial infarction as it's called and I remember them saying it'll take 40 minutes to get to hospital Eastbourne hospital take 40 minutes to get to hospital we don't have 40 minutes and they organised the air ambulance. So I was winched aloft with the populace of Hastings weeping beneath. So off I went and they did all this surgery and stuff. And then ever since, I'm on loads of pills, loads and loads.

50:25No time to really recuperate. Anyone with a proper job could have had months off on full pay, but, you know, not for the self-employed frantic freelance. so that was in but i do know that you were advised by your doctors or doctor to give up drinking yes and you did for a while i did seven years seven years yes and i nearly died of boredom

50:55it was terrible i'd go to these parties and it was sort of like standing on the beach and everyone else is floating out to sea and splashing and it was a lovely time and i'd be left behind and are you in a good place are you a happy person no i'm not i seldom have i been happy because you have to be happy you have to be carefree and i never seem to be able to be um are you a nightmare for anna have you been what's the worst what's the worst thing you've done for anna or with anna well she's very sort of peaceable person and i'm sort of just a bundle of nerves and rage and disappointment. And do you not think maybe you should do something about that?

51:38Or does it not matter? Yes, I'd love other people to allow me to be more successful. Ah. But as a psychologist... It's other people's fault. Of course it is. As a psychologist, has she given you any advice? Yes, and I don't listen to it. I'm very bad at taking advice. So has she suggested therapy? Yes, she has. And have you tried it? Certainly not. I'd hate that. Have you got your next book in your head? Yes, it's written. Oh. It's called Fog by Tea Time, approximately in the vicinity of Victoria Wood. And she emerges from all I've been writing about, Gracie Fields, Hilda Baker, Thora Heard, Dora Bryan, Joyce Grenfell, Caroline Hearn, Morecamore Wise, Alan Bennett.

52:30They're the only men in it. and there's all these northern women, Marty Kane. And what are you learning from them? What do they have in common? Well, Lancashire mainly. A lot of them, well, I mean, Thora lived forever, but a lot of them died young of cancer. Found it hard getting these careers as funny women in a world where stand-ups were all men. So there's a lot of misogyny involved. Or they had to turn themselves into freaks, you know, sort of grotesques. Hattie Jakes, very, you know, fat or Hildebaker mangling the English language. So there are all these cross-currents. And you do this because it's interesting.

53:19Yeah, interesting to me. And satisfying for you. Interesting to me. And at the end of the day, are you pleased that this has been your career, that you didn't stay as an academic? Oh, yes. you know it's all I can do it's all I'm good at just tell me what comes into your head immediately a moment of joy in your life Roger Lewis unbridled joy I think when we were in Vienna last year and went to see Rosenkavalier at the opera and then dinner afterwards in the Hotel Sacker that was marvellous I thought why can't life always be like this you know Vienna is wonderfully still the pre-war world and you mean the pre-war pre-second war even pre-first world yes yeah yeah the world of the Franz Joseph Emperor Franz Joseph era and a moment of sadness what comes into your head um well i was over in normandy for two months and after a few weeks anna had to go back to england to look after her mother and look after the grandchildren so i was left alone for nearly three weeks i'm completely alone and uh when they when she was with tristan and they drove away.

54:46That was awful. There was a real sense of loss and loneliness. That was appalling, actually. And I almost felt like running after them. Do you have a favourite line in your head of writing by somebody else? Yes, there's lots of Philip Larkin goes round and round my head. he's one of my favourite writers and Kingsley Amis I adore those two The Old Devils is one of my favourite novels I reread it probably every year because to this very day it's the only book about the sort of middle class English speaking South Welsh it's the only book in existence about my background and what has Wales given you?

55:38what in you Roger chooses to live in Hastings in Italy, in France and Austria. Clearly, you're very conscious of your Welshness. We can still hear it. And in your appearance, there is... It's been a bit unflattering, but I know what you mean. What is it that Wales has given you? Well, I think what it's mainly given me is this inability to get on with cold-blooded Anglo-Saxons. I think the sort of Celtic temperament makes it very hard to get on with, as I say, the English, I suppose. Rachel Roberts had the same trouble Richard Burton did. There's this sort of temperamental clash, I think. Very emotional.

56:28The emotions are near the surface. So, you know, quickly get angry and temperamental and then forget it. But other people, they're all still a bit upset and worried and concerned. And it's totally gone from how I feel now. What is the best of the Welsh? Well, we're good at parties and singing and we're not shy. And what is the worst of the Welsh? They're good at singing and parties and we're not shy. You're very, very funny. And now you are, is it 65? Yes. Oh, my goodness. Awful. Fraying at the edges. Well, bits dropping off, partly because you won't take your doctor's advice, but there we are.

57:18That's your choice. What have you learnt in life, Roger Lewis? You've studied the lives of some of the most remarkable people of our time. What have you learnt from life? Hope for the best, expect the worst. I'm a pessimist, you know. People say, oh, you know that awful cliché about the glass half full or half empty. Just knocked over and smashed and nothing in it and the nice wine's all over the floor. Disappointment. And things never quite coming right. Just accept that. The nice wine all over the floor. Well, I'm very glad you came and shared a glass of water with me. You're brilliant. Roger Lewis, thank you very much for being with us on Rosebud.

58:10Hello, I'm Giles and you're... Harriet. And we have got some very exciting New Year news because from January 2026, any moment now, we are, well, we're going to put everybody in the family way. Because we are launching the Rosebud family. What is the Rosebud family? The Rosebud Family is our Rosebud subscription service for lovers of the podcast, fans, followers, friends, who would like to pay a little bit every month to get some ad-free Rosebud and some extras. You're sounding like the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am. We're asking everyone to make a small contribution to improve their way of life and cut back on the cost of living.

58:53Do I sound like I don't really know what's going on as well? No, you do. You know exactly what's going on. And the point is, what's going on is this. Some people would like an ad-free option. So essentially, this is giving people who'd like an ad-free option, that option. But more than that, you get bonus episodes, don't you? Extras. What are we offering? We're offering a monthly bonus episode of you and me chatting. Oh, yes. More than chatting. We're actually going to go down memory lane. I think it's going to be quite intriguing. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. Oh, and I'm doing some fiction.

59:22Yeah. Because I love a murder mystery and you quite like a murder mystery. So I've written murder mysteries. They're Victorian, late Victorian London. Murder mysteries featuring some of the extraordinary figures from that time. Bram Stoker, the guy who created Dracula. Arthur Conan Doyle, who gave us Sherlock Holmes. Oscar Wilde, who gave us that portrait in the attic. Anyway, these are murder mysteries set in late Victorian London. And once a fortnight, you'll get a bit of one of those. And tell me about this thing you've called the Rosebud Retort. this is the rosebud family chat room so it's a subscriber only chat room where you can get together talk about rosebud get to know each other and have fun we're also going to be hitting the road aren't we in 2026 we're going to be doing shows around the uk we may even be in edinburgh for the summer still to be decided but anyway if you join the rosebud family you'll obviously be the first people to hear about this and get special offers so there's going to be lots lots Lots of nice things happening when you join us in the Rosebud family.

1:00:27And it starts in January. Hey! But of course, regular Rosebud, with ads, is available free twice a week. Yeah. From now until whatever it is that the rainbow ends.

1:00:55Thank you.

1:01:28That's this week's More Rosebud with me, Giles Brandreth, and my friend and producer, Harriet Jane. It's produced by Harriet, and I turn up too.